"Nevil said in his telegram that he would be here about a quarter past seven, and it is now five minutes past nine," said Mrs. Arbuthnot tearfully.
"Five-and-twenty minutes to nine, mon enfant, according to Greenwich," said I, as reassuringly as the circumstances permitted. "Your clock is wrong by half an hour. But there has been a bad accident at Blankhampton. Would they come by Blankhampton? If they did, that would be bound to delay them."
"Oh dear!" said Mrs. Arbuthnot. "If anything has happened to the King! And oh, Sonia dear, how late you are!" she added reproachfully. "I was getting so horribly nervous about you. And you not here to present me or anything! But now you've come it is all right. Just be a dear and have a look at the table before you go up to dress."
The Princess, however, had scarcely had time to yield to Mrs. Arbuthnot's suggestion, and I was in the act of walking upstairs in a state of uncomfortable anxiety in regard to the operation of changing my clothes, when from the vicinity of the hall door there came the sounds of fresh arrivals. I hurried to it, to be greeted immediately by the voice of Fitz.
"Rather late," he said with that air of languor which afflicted him on great occasions. "Line blocked at Blankhampton. Devil of a smash. Tiresome cross-country journey, but we've turned up at last."
"Safe and sound, I hope?"
"Right as rain."
As we walked together down the front steps to the open door of the car that stood at the bottom in the darkness, I was conscious that my pulse was a thought too rapid for a tacit subscriber to the theory of democracy. I held the door while an enormous figure of a man disengaged himself slowly, and not without difficulty, from the interior.
I made a somewhat lower bow than the Englishman in general permits himself. A smiling and subtle visage, at once handsome and venerable, was promptly turned upon me, and I found myself exchanging a cordial and powerful grip of the hand.
Ferdinand the Twelfth ascended the front steps in the charge of his son-in-law, while I held the door for the second occupant of the car to alight. I made an obeisance only a shade less in depth than the one I had bestowed upon the Sovereign. Baron von Schalk was small and dapper, with a face full of intelligence and not unlike that of a bird of prey. As we exchanged bows, it seemed that every line of it, and there were many, was eloquent of power.